Re: poly: Solar system development

carl feynman <carlf@atg.com> writes:

> A quick calculation of vigorous childbearing in an immortal population:
>
> If everyone starts having kids at age 20, and has a child every 5 years
> forever, the population grows at 6.6% annually, doubling every 10.5 years.
> I can explain how I got this, if anyone cares.

The big question is how large child bearing would be in an immortal
population.

It seems likely it would be lower than one child every 5 years,
especially since having several children of widely differing ages is
troublesome (you get to have both the terrible twos, school problems,
teenage problems and big brother moving out at the same time) and it
is likely that the standard of living and economy would be relatively
affluent.

But it seems unlikely that most people would settle for having around
two kids at 20-30 and then no children ever, assuming a form of
immortality where they remained at a vigorous adult stage. But how
often would people have kids?

My guess is that a likely pattern would be having kids, bringing them
up, a period of rest/freedom after they have grown up, and after a
while a second family (with the same or a different partner). That
suggests around 2 kids every 30 years or so.

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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